Italy
71 places across 20 territories, 3 nationwide
Italy joins in phase 2 of the atlas. Urban commons (beni comuni), municipal collaboration regulations and regeneration experiences built on vacancy will be its starting point.
Tap a point to see its summary; clusters open when pressed. The full keyboard-friendly list lives in Explore.
Places by territory
AvanziAvanzi - Sostenibilita per Azioni
Milán (MI) · Lombardia
Avanzi is one of the pioneering organisations in social innovation and sustainability in Italy, active in Milan since 1997.
VerifiedSee place →Reuse of vacancySpaceBASE Milano
Milán · Lombardia
BASE Milano occupies 12,000 square metres of the former Ansaldo factory, in the Tortona district, following a public competition run by the city coun…
VerifiedSee place →Commons and belongingSpaceCascina Cuccagna
Milán · Lombardia
This 17th-century farmhouse, municipal property since 1984, was abandoned and declared uninhabitable in the 1990s.
VerifiedSee place →Civic design collectivesProjectcheFare
Milán (MI) · Lombardia
cheFare defines itself as an agency for cultural transformation: it has worked since 2012, and formally since 2014, with museums, libraries, cooperat…
VerifiedSee place →Commons and belongingSpaceMacao
Milán · Lombardia
In 2012 a collective of cultural workers occupied the Palazzina Liberty in Milan, on the Viale Molise, to demand public space for the arts after the…
VerifiedSee place →Art and territorySpaceMare Culturale Urbano
Milán (San Siro) · Lombardia
Three cultural promoters won a municipal competition to regenerate an abandoned farmhouse in San Siro, a peripheral district of Milan, and since 2016…
VerifiedSee place →Mercato di TestaccioMercato rionale di Testaccio
Roma (RM) · Lazio
The Testaccio market was born in the working-class district of the same name, next to the old slaughterhouse, and in 2012 moved to a new building con…
Partially verifiedSee place →Reuse of vacancySpaceOfficine ZeroOZ
Roma · Lazio
Former workers of a bankrupt railway workshop occupied this industrial building in Rome in 2012 to avoid losing their jobs.
VerifiedSee place →Commons and belongingSpaceTeatro Valle Occupato
Roma · Lazio
A group of performing arts workers occupied this historic Rome theatre in June 2011 to stop its privatisation after the Ente Teatrale Italiano was di…
Partially verifiedSee place →Civic foodProjectZappata Romana
Roma · Lazio
A project by the architecture studio studioUAP that has been mapping and supporting Rome's shared vegetable gardens since 2010.
Partially verifiedSee place →Ex Asilo FilangieriL'Asilo
Nápoles · Campania
A former 16th-century convent and asylum occupied in 2012 by cultural workers during the Naples theatre festival.
VerifiedSee place →Commons and belongingSpaceEx OPG Je so' pazzo
Nápoles · Campania
A former judicial psychiatric hospital in the Materdei district, occupied in March 2015 by students, workers and residents after Italy's criminal asy…
VerifiedSee place →Civic foodSpaceGiardino Liberato di Materdei
Nápoles · Campania
A former garden of an abandoned convent in the Materdei district, reclaimed around 2012 by residents and collectives who turned it into a vegetable g…
Partially verifiedSee place →Civic foodSpaceLe Terre di Don Peppe DianaCooperativa Le Terre di Don Peppe Diana, Libera Terra
Castel Volturno (Caserta) · Campania
The first Libera Terra cooperative in Campania, created in 2010 on land and a former cheese dairy confiscated from the Casalesi clan in Castel Voltur…
Partially verifiedSee place →Commons and belongingSpaceScugnizzo Liberato
Nápoles · Campania
A former juvenile prison housed in a 17th-century convent, occupied in September 2015 by a network of activists and residents of Naples's historic ce…
VerifiedSee place →Cooperativa Placido Rizzotto
San Giuseppe Jato (Palermo) · Sicilia
The first cooperative of the Libera Terra project, founded in November 2001 to legally farm more than two hundred hectares confiscated from mafia bos…
Partially verifiedSee place →Art and territorySpaceFarm Cultural Park
Favara (Agrigento) · Sicilia
A contemporary art centre created in 2010 by notary Andrea Bartoli and lawyer Florinda Saieva in the historic centre of Favara, five months after the…
VerifiedSee place →Third placeSpaceMercato di BallaròBallarò
Palermo · Sicilia
A street market in the working-class Albergheria district, with origins attributed to the Arab period of Sicily, between the ninth and tenth centurie…
Partially verifiedSee place →Cascina Roccafranca
Turín (Mirafiori Nord) · Piemonte
A former 17th-century farmhouse abandoned in the 1960s and recovered by the Turin city council's Progetto Urban, which reopened it as a casa del quar…
VerifiedSee place →Reuse of vacancySpaceCavallerizza Reale
Turín · Piemonte
A 17th-century baroque complex, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, occupied since 2014 by a citizens' committee demanding cultural and civic use against i…
Partially verifiedSee place →Art and territorySpaceCittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto
Biella · Piemonte
The artist Michelangelo Pistoletto founded Cittadellarte in 1998 in the former Lanificio Trombetta in Biella, a refurbished textile factory, to posit…
VerifiedSee place →Third placeSpaceMercato di Porta Palazzo
Turin (TO) · Piemonte
Porta Palazzo is the largest open-air market in Europe and has operated in Piazza della Repubblica in Turin since 1835, when a cholera epidemic force…
VerifiedSee place →Participatory urbanismNeighbourhood or villageOstana
Ostana (Cuneo) · Piemonte
Ostana, in the Piedmontese Po valley, fell from almost 1,200 residents in 1921 to just a few dozen after the exodus to the cities and France.
Partially verifiedSee place →Circolo Arci Guernelli
Bolonia (BO) · Emilia-Romagna
The Circolo Arci Guernelli has operated since 1945 as a meeting point for the San Donato district in Bologna.
Partially verifiedSee place →Commons and belongingProjectCooperativa Valle dei Cavalieri
Succiso, Ventasso (Reggio Emilia) · Emilia-Romagna
In 1991 the residents of Succiso, a village in the Reggio Emilia Apennines at 1,000 metres altitude, founded Italy's first cooperativa di comunità to…
VerifiedSee place →Civic foodSpaceCucine Popolari
Bolonia · Emilia-Romagna
Roberto Morgantini and Elvira Segreto used the money from their wedding gifts to open Bologna's first popular canteen, in the Bolognina district.
VerifiedSee place →Reuse of vacancySpaceFactory GrisùSpazio Grisù
Ferrara · Emilia-Romagna
Ferrara's former fire station, closed in 2004, was transformed from 2012 into a creative factory run by a consortium of cultural businesses that comm…
Partially verifiedSee place →Civic design collectivesProjectKilowattKilowatt Societa Cooperativa
Bolonia (BO) · Emilia-Romagna
Kilowatt is the Bologna-based cooperative that in 2014 professionalised the work of the Associazione Kilowatt, winner of calls such as Incredibol and…
VerifiedSee place →Reuse of vacancySpaceLe Serre dei Giardini Margherita
Bolonia · Emilia-Romagna
Kilowatt, a social innovation cooperative, transformed the former municipal greenhouses of the Giardini Margherita into a hybrid space for coworking,…
VerifiedSee place →Third placeSpaceMercato AlbinelliMercato Storico Albinelli
Modena (MO) · Emilia-Romagna
The Mercato Albinelli replaced centuries of open-air selling in Piazza Grande in Modena in 1931 and is today the city's oldest covered market, with a…
VerifiedSee place →Third placeProjectPartecipanza Agraria di Nonantola
Nonantola (MO) · Emilia-Romagna
The Partecipanza Agraria di Nonantola has managed around 765 hectares of collective, undivided land north of the town since a concession dating from…
Partially verifiedSee place →Participatory urbanismProjectRegolamento sui beni comuni de BoloniaRegolamento per la cura e rigenerazione dei beni comuni urbani
Bolonia · Emilia-Romagna
In 2014 Bologna approved the first Italian regulation for the shared administration of urban beni comuni, drafted together with Labsus.
VerifiedSee place →Commons and belongingNeighbourhood or villageSocial Street Via Fondazza
Bolonia · Emilia-Romagna
In September 2013 journalist Federico Bastiani created a Facebook group so that residents of via Fondazza could get to know one another, at no cost a…
Partially verifiedSee place →Casa del Popolo Il ProgressoCircolo Il Progresso
Florencia (FI) · Toscana
The Casa del Popolo Il Progresso was founded in 1915 in the Florentine district of Rifredi as a workers' recreational society and moved in 1922 to th…
VerifiedSee place →Civic design collectivesProjectLamaLAMA Impresa Sociale
Florencia (FI) · Toscana
LAMA is a Florentine cooperative founded in 2007 that specialises in public policy design, participatory processes, placemaking and the management of…
Partially verifiedSee place →Reuse of vacancySpaceLe Murate
Florencia · Toscana
This former enclosed convent, later a prison until 1985, has since 2001 been one of Florence's most cited urban regeneration complexes, with 14,500 s…
VerifiedSee place →Reuse of vacancySpaceManifattura Tabacchi
Florencia · Toscana
Florence's former tobacco factory, active between 1933 and 2001, has been under conversion since 2016 into a 110,000-square-metre district with schoo…
Partially verifiedSee place →Le Regole del Comelico
Comelico Superiore (BL) · Veneto
The Regole del Comelico are at once a patrimony of woods, meadows and pastures and the community of regolieri who own and manage it collectively and…
Partially verifiedSee place →Commons and belongingProjectRegole d'AmpezzoRegole ampezzane
Cortina d'Ampezzo (Belluno) · Veneto
The Regole d'Ampezzo are an institution of collective ownership of pastures and forests dating back to the thirteenth century, when the valley's firs…
VerifiedSee place →Commons and belongingSpaceS.a.L.E. Docks
Venecia (Dorsoduro) · Veneto
In 2007 a group of activists occupied a former salt warehouse in Dorsoduro to create an independent space for contemporary art and critical thought a…
VerifiedSee place →Casa delle AgriCulture Tullia e Gino
Castiglione d'Otranto (Lecce) · Puglia
An association founded in 2013 in a village in the Salento to reclaim more than fifteen hectares of abandoned land lent free of charge by their owner…
VerifiedSee place →Reuse of vacancySpaceEx Fadda
San Vito dei Normanni (Brindisi) · Puglia
A former winery of the Dentice di Frasso family, of around fifteen thousand square metres, abandoned and reclaimed since 2012 by young people from Sa…
VerifiedSee place →Casa Netural
Matera · Basilicata
The first rural coworking and coliving space in southern Italy, opened in Matera in 2012 before the city became European Capital of Culture.
VerifiedSee place →Reuse of vacancyProjectWonder Grottole
Grottole (Matera) · Basilicata
A social enterprise created in 2018 to regenerate Grottole, a village in the province of Matera almost emptied by emigration, by buying and refurbish…
VerifiedSee place →Comunità Energetica Rinnovabile di Ussaramanna
Ussaramanna (Sud Sardegna) · Sardegna
A small municipality in the Marmilla that in 2021 launched one of Italy's first renewable energy communities, driven and funded by the town council i…
Partially verifiedSee place →Civic labs and participationNeighbourhood or villageOllolai
Ollolai (Nuoro) · Sardegna
A village in the Barbagia that around 2014 began selling abandoned houses in the historic centre for one euro, on condition they were refurbished wit…
Partially verifiedSee place →Camini
Camini (Reggio Calabria) · Calabria
A village in the Aspromonte that was losing population to emigration until, from 2011, the social cooperative Jungi Mundu (founded in 1999) began hou…
Partially verifiedSee place →Commons and belongingNeighbourhood or villageRiace
Riace (Reggio Calabria) · Calabria
A small Calabrian municipality that since 1998 has hosted refugees and asylum seekers in the empty houses of its old town, to halt demographic declin…
Partially verifiedSee place →Comunità di San Benedetto al Porto
Génova · Liguria
The priest Andrea Gallo founded this Christian base community in the port of Genoa in 1970 to take in people struggling with addiction, homeless peop…
VerifiedSee place →Third placeSpaceMercato Orientale
Genova (GE) · Liguria
The Mercato Orientale has occupied the former cloister of a 17th century convent in the centre of Genoa since 1899, between via XX Settembre and via…
Partially verifiedSee place →Participatory urbanismProjectRegolamento dei beni comuni di Genova
Génova · Liguria
In October 2016 Genoa approved its regulation for collaboration between citizens and the administration to look after urban beni comuni, inspired by…
VerifiedSee place →Cooperativa di Comunità dei Sibillini
Comunanza (Ascoli Piceno) · Marche
After the 2016 earthquake in central Italy, Slow Food promoted in Comunanza, a municipality of around 3,000 people in the Marche Apennines, the creat…
Partially verifiedSee place →Reuse of vacancySpaceMole Vanvitelliana
Ancona · Marche
This pentagonal lazaretto, built in the eighteenth century by Luigi Vanvitelli on an artificial island in the port of Ancona, went through military a…
VerifiedSee place →EVA, Eco Villaggio Autocostruito di PescomaggioreEVA - Eco Villaggio Autocostruito
Pescomaggiore, L'Aquila · Abruzzo
After the L'Aquila earthquake of April 2009, a group of residents organised since 2007 in the Comitato per la Rinascita di Pescomaggiore decided not…
Partially verifiedSee place →Reuse of vacancyNeighbourhood or villageSanto Stefano di Sessanio
Santo Stefano di Sessanio (L'Aquila) · Abruzzo
A fortified medieval village in the Gran Sasso that by the end of the 1990s had barely seventy residents.
Partially verifiedSee place →CAOS, Centro Arti Opificio SiriCAOS - Centro per le Arti Opificio Siri
Terni · Umbria
The former Siri chemical factory in Terni, acquired by the city council between 1997 and 2002 and converted since 2009 into a 5,600-square-metre cont…
VerifiedSee place →Third placeProjectComunanza Agraria di Santo Stefano dei Piccioni
Foligno (PG) · Umbria
The Comunanza Agraria di Santo Stefano dei Piccioni manages land of medieval origin in a small hamlet of Foligno, in Umbria, with usi civici rights g…
Partially verifiedSee place →Third placeProjectUniversità Agraria di ViepriComunanza Agraria di Viepri
Viepri, Massa Martana (Perugia) · Umbria
An institution of collective ownership of medieval origin, managing two hundred and eighty-two hectares of forest and pasture in a hamlet of Massa Ma…
Partially verifiedSee place →Habitat Microaree
Trieste (Rozzol Melara) · Friuli-Venezia Giulia
Since 1998 the Trieste city council, the public health service and the social housing agency ATER have worked together on microaree, public housing n…
Partially verifiedSee place →Reuse of vacancySpaceParco di San Giovanniex Ospedale Psichiatrico Provinciale
Trieste · Friuli-Venezia Giulia
Franco Basaglia ran Trieste's psychiatric hospital from 1971 and opened its doors to the city, starting the reform that led to the legal closure of a…
Partially verifiedSee place →Arte Sella
Borgo Valsugana (Trento) · Trentino-Alto Adige
Three friends from Borgo Valsugana created an open-air contemporary art trail in 1986 in the meadows and woods of the Val di Sella, where more than t…
Partially verifiedSee place →Third placeSpaceFamiglia Cooperativa di Rovere della Luna
Rovere della Luna (TN) · Trentino-Alto Adige
The Famiglia Cooperativa di Rovere della Luna is a village cooperative shop active since 1905, heir to the model that the priest Don Lorenzo Guetti p…
VerifiedSee place →Participatory urbanismSpaceGiardino ex Caserme Duca d'Aosta
Trento · Trentino-Alto Adige
In 2024, during Trento's year as European Volunteering Capital, the San Giuseppe Santa Chiara district ran a participatory process to revalue the gar…
VerifiedSee place →Third placeProjectMagnifica Comunita di Fiemme
Cavalese (TN) · Trentino-Alto Adige
The Magnifica Comunità di Fiemme collectively and indivisibly administers around 20,000 hectares of woods and pastures in the Val di Fiemme, a right…
VerifiedSee place →Castel del Giudice
Castel del Giudice (Isernia) · Molise
A small mountain municipality in the Alto Molise that in the early 2000s launched, under mayor Lino Gentile, a regeneration model based on a combinat…
Partially verifiedSee place →Art and territoryProjectCvtà Street Fest
Civitacampomarano (Campobasso) · Molise
An international urban art festival that since 2016 has brought murals by artists from around the world to the façades of a medieval Molise village e…
VerifiedSee place →Plus
Aosta · Valle d'Aosta
Plus is Aosta's youth hub, driven by the city council and the region in the former Cittadella dei Giovani, a refurbished municipal slaughterhouse.
Partially verifiedSee place →Commons and belongingProjectRéseau des Consorteries et des biens communs de la Vallée d'Aoste
Saint-Christophe (Aosta) · Valle d'Aosta
The Aosta Valley consorteries are institutions of collective ownership of pastures and forests, some of medieval origin, that organise communal grazi…
Partially verifiedSee place →LabsusLabsus, Laboratorio per la sussidiarietà
Roma · Nationwide
The laboratory that drafted the regulation for the shared administration of beni comuni that Bologna approved in 2014 and that hundreds of Italian mu…
VerifiedSee place →Commons and belongingProjectRete Nazionale delle Case del QuartiereRete delle Case del Quartiere
Turín · Nationwide
A network of case del quartiere born in Turin in 2012, with the Cascina Roccafranca as its first node.
Partially verifiedSee place →Civic design collectivesProjectRiabitare l'Italia
Roma (RM) · Nationwide
Riabitare l'Italia grew out of the manifesto of the same name published in December 2018 and was set up as an association to place the demographic de…
Partially verifiedSee place →Territory by typology
| Territory | Third place | Participatory urbanism | Civic design collectives | Art and territory | Reuse of vacancy | Civic food | Commons and belonging | Civic labs and participation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lombardia | · | 1 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| Lazio | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Campania | · | 1 | · | 1 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 2 |
| Sicilia | 1 | 1 | · | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | · |
| Piemonte | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
| Emilia-Romagna | 3 | 1 | 1 | · | 3 | 4 | 6 | 2 |
| Toscana | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | · | 2 | · |
| Veneto | 1 | · | · | 1 | · | · | 3 | · |
| Puglia | · | 1 | · | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Basilicata | · | · | · | · | 1 | · | 2 | 2 |
| Sardegna | · | · | · | · | 1 | · | 1 | 2 |
| Calabria | · | · | · | · | · | · | 2 | 2 |
| Liguria | 1 | 1 | · | · | · | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Marche | · | · | · | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | · |
| Abruzzo | · | · | · | · | 1 | · | 1 | 1 |
| Umbria | 2 | · | · | 1 | 1 | · | 2 | · |
| Friuli-Venezia Giulia | · | · | · | · | 1 | · | 2 | 2 |
| Trentino-Alto Adige | 2 | 1 | · | 1 | · | 1 | 2 | · |
| Molise | · | 1 | · | 1 | · | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Valle d'Aosta | · | · | · | · | · | · | 2 | 1 |
| Nationwide | · | · | 2 | · | 1 | · | 2 | 1 |